Hindu leaders blame Nepal’s church growth on greed

The former Hindu monarchy of Nepal boasts one of the fastest growing Christian populations. Hindu critics claim money and greed are driving the growth, but Christians say the country’s caste system makes Christ’s message of equality especially appealing.

Hindu shaman Purna Bahadur Praja told The Guardian that people in the Chepang region turned to Christianity for assistance after the 2015 earthquake that killed nearly 9,000 people and left thousands of others homeless.

“[A]fter the earthquake, they got Bibles, rice, clothes, blankets, money to build churches. Pastors were getting motorbikes. … They spend the whole time emailing foreigners to ask for money,” Praja said.

Another Hindu priest told The Guardian that well-funded foreign organizations are “using money to promote Christianity,” helping sick church members and only providing post-earthquake aid to Christians.

While the disaster certainly created a need for humanitarian assistance, it also increased opportunities to share the gospel. Christian groups say many conversions were sincere and most ministries helped everyone, regardless of their faith.

“Christians did some of the church reconstruction after the earthquake but they have done more for the general public, [from] emergency relief to reconstruction,” said pastor Tanka Subedi, co-chairman of the Nepal Christian Society and the leader of Nepal’s Religious Liberty Forum.

The end of Nepal’s monarchy in 2008 and the establishment of a secular government allowed more freedom of religion in the country, although freedom is not absolute. By 2015, Christians numbered more than 1 million, about 3.8 percent of Nepal’s 28.5 million people, according to the World Christian Database.

Conversions of low-caste Hindus, known as Dalits, are driving the growth, according to The Guardian. Dalits suffer discrimination, deprivation, and abuse in Hindu culture due to their lowly status.

“It’s not surprising that Dalits are converting en masse, or that Christian groups would be doing work within this community,” said International Christian Concern’s William Stark, noting the Dalits are the most marginalized, least educated, and neediest people in the country.

The common “false narrative” of inducement or exchange for conversion to other religions pervades Southeast Asia, not just Nepal, Stark said, and Hindu nationalists often promote the idea. While he acknowledged instances of such behavior aren’t impossible, he insisted they are rare, noting that Dalits are drawn to Christianity because it validates their human worth.

“The message of the gospel—that everyone is equal, everyone is loved by God, and God’s sacrifice was for everyone—is attractive especially to people of a Dalit background,” Stark said.

Philippine church bells ring against drug killings

A Catholic archbishop in the northern Philippines declared last week that church bells would ring every night for three months in response to the recent spike in police killings of drug suspects.

Archbishop Socrates Villegas said the bells will toll for 15 minutes every night from Aug. 22 to Nov. 27 to awaken the public, “which has become a coward in expressing anger against evil.”

Police officials killed more than 80 drug and criminal suspects in three days last week in the deadliest days of President Rodrigo Duterte’s crackdown on drug rings.

“The sounding of the bells is a call to stop approval of the killings,” Villegas said in a statement read at churches in the Pangasinan district Sunday.

Other churches in Manila read a statement from Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle, who condemned the bloody crackdown as a waste of human life. —Onize Ohikere

Cambridge Press reverses course on Chinese censorship

Cambridge University Press (CUP) on Monday reversed its initial decision to remove more than 300 politically sensitive articles from its Chinese publication at the request of the country’s authorities.

Some of the previously censored articles published in The China Quarterly address issues involving the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests and the country’s Cultural Revolution, among other topics forbidden in China.

Hundreds of scholars and academics signed a petition asking for the articles to be restored after the publisher announced their removal on Friday. They described the censorship as a move by the country’s government to impose its way of thinking.

“Access to published materials of the highest quality is a core component of scholarly research,” Tim Pringle, the publication’s editor, said Monday on Twitter. “It is not the role of respected global publishing houses such as CUP to hinder such access.” —O.O.

Rescued Chibok girls say kidnapping was accidental

Boko Haram’s 2014 kidnapping of more than 200 schoolgirls from northeast Nigeria drew global attention to the terror group’s atrocities, especially against Christians. But in a Reuters report last week, several of the girls described their kidnapping as the accidental result of a failed robbery attempt. The report is based on interviews and diaries kept by several of the girls during their captivity. One of the girls, Naomi Adamu, wrote that the Boko Haram militants came to the school looking for machinery to build houses. When they didn’t find anything, the militants decided to take the girls to their group’s leader instead of killing them. The girls said they started keeping the diary after their captors gave them notebooks for Quranic lessons. The diaries detailed regular beatings, Islamic indoctrination, and pressure to marry and convert. —O.O.

Christian group calls for U.S. action against ISIS genocide

Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) has called on the United States to take action against Islamic State genocide in Iraq and Syria, following the presentation of the U.S. State Department’s International Religious Freedom Report. In releasing the report, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said the protection of religious minorities suffering from ISIS is a “human rights priority for the Trump administration.” Kelsey Zorzi, the UN counsel for ADF International in New York, said the move by the United States to recognize and condemn the atrocities is an important first step that should be followed by stronger actions: “As a signatory to the Convention on Genocide the United States is obliged to act fast to stop the carnage and prosecute the perpetrators. Not a single ISIS militant has ever been under investigation for genocide or other international crimes.” —O.O.

South Sudan refugees exceed 1 million in Uganda

The United Nations refugee agency is calling for additional support for the more than 1 million South Sudanese refugees now living in Uganda. UNHCR said an average of 1,800 South Sudanese have arrived in Uganda daily over the past 12 months. Another million or more are in Sudan, Kenya, Ethiopia, the Central African Republic, and the Democratic Republic of Congo. The agency said recent arrivals continue to tell of armed groups burning houses with civilians inside, sexual assaults, and the kidnapping and forced conscription of boys. South Sudan’s civil war began in 2013, and more than 2 million people have fled the country. “With refugees still arriving in the thousands, the amount of aid we are able to deliver is increasingly falling short,” UNHCR said in a statement. —O.O.