PEOPLE ARE SUFFERING... just like it did during the early days of Acts and the Roman Emperors.

http://indianchristians.in/news/content/view/1799/42/

<<The violence allegedly began when Christians in a village 150 kms from Phulbani, the headquarters of Kandhamal district, began to celebrate Christmas Eve. Local Hindu fundamentalists opposed the event and a fight ensued. Also, a Hindutva leader, Swami Saraswati, was attacked by unknown assailants -- allegedly Christians -- near Daringbadi while he was travelling. The next day the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) called for a strike and its members began attacking Christians across the state.>>

To this must be added, that the assailants of Swami Saraswati are not unknown..they are KNOWN.. here.

http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5iG0fIFmfztRvm5bJX9wx9Ao2fqLA

Contrast that..with this!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hLcEXtOMBnU&feature=related

This is a HOLOCAUST. Suffering caused by the stories spread about Christians just as during Roman times.. the early Christians...it is happening right now and for the same reasons.

One pastor was forced to watch while his wife was raped.
1000 Churches attacked and 730 Christian homes destroyed. Many 1000s in refugee camps. Government preventing NGO aid.

At the heart of this is the ill feeling towards Christians who are now receiving an education which liberates them from feeling locked into such jobs as removing human faeces from toilets with their bare hands.. jobs only for untouchables.

There is no question that the Faith is disturbing the social order..but what an order it is, which consigns people to lifelong exploitation and ill treatment simply because they are considered to be in the wrong caste.

I urge any reader to make your voice known to the Indian Government to prevent such widespread violence against Christians simply because they are Christian.

Boaz,

Sounds really bad.
I followed the link and and it looks really bad.
I also googled the incident to understand the other side of the story and found these slides on a Hindu site:

http://www.authorstream.com/Presentation/glnmurthy-89268-missionary-saitan-orissa-christian-india-conversions-presentation-news-reports-ppt-powerpoint/

Sounds like a deep issue to me from both sides.

Peace,

I scanned a range of sites to try and gain a broader impression of what is happening.

My overall impression is that christains are being persecuted by Hindu extremists. I also noticed that the language on christain sites was often very provocative compared to other coverage. Some of what appeared to be balanced reports are linked below.

This conflict seemed to be the sort of thing many of us fight against when we rebutt David's frequent attempts to promote suspicion and dilike of muslims in Australia. The suspicion and hatred of a group which spills into violence when a particular incident ignites passions after the embers of hatred of have fed by militants for a long period.

http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1698533,00.html?xid=feed-cnn-topics

http://hrw.org/english/docs/2007/12/28/india17668.htm

http://sify.com/news/fullstory.php?id=14791626

R0bert

This looks like a return to the dark ages.

It only proves that today we should have
some very serious concerns with the
fundamentalist fringes of any religion.

Be it Hinduism, Christianity, or any other.

When people's minds are poisoned with hatred,
unnecessary bitter and bloody divisions
tragically occur.

We must keep in mind however that the
religiously minded modern person is not a
"card carrying" fundamentalist.

The latter are a tiny minority. Of whatever faith,
any psychologist would declare them of unsound mind.

The incidents in Orissa are very, very sad.

Poly,

A very bad situation indeed. Will we ever be without situations like this? Tragic.

In Rome the Christian sect of Jews had it doubly bad. For some time before the fall of the Temple the Jews were tolerated by the Romans. Later, when the sect broke officially from the "mother religion" that was in a civil sense breach of the pater familias and in a religious sense there was a loss of the protection afforded by the "ancient" religion. Of course, after Constantine the Christians were very bad indeed, acting like today's Taliban.

[We please check back at Sells' sucuide thread. Matters still outstanding. I think waterboy is waiting too. Thanks]

Historically, Christians were NOT fed to the lions in the Colosseum.

That was a Hollywood myth started by Cecil B DeMille - just like the phoney "thumb-up" signal was meant to spare the vanquished gladiator. (It was actually a "thumb inside the fist", meaning to sheath the sword)

Most executions of Christian "criminals" were done outside the city walls - as for all other religious denominations.

Also, more Christians were killed by other Christians in the years following Constantine than were killed by any of the Roman Emperors before him - just like every part of history since.