Tag Archives: Persecution

Christian child care worker fired after being harassed by lesbian co-worker

Story from the UK Telegraph.

Excerpt:

A Christian nursery worker is taking her former employers to court claiming she was sacked for her beliefs after refusing to read stories about gay couples to children.

Sarah Mbuyi says she was dismissed due to religious discrimination, having also been accused of “harassing” a lesbian colleague to whom she gave a Bible when she was recovering from an accident.

The case, lodged at an employment tribunal, comes amid growing concerns among some Christians that religious beliefs are being “outlawed” in the workplace. A Christian group backing the case says it is an example of believers being “robbed” of the freedom to express views.

[…]Miss Mbuyi, 30, who lives in north London, carries a Bible. She started work for Newpark Childcare, a London-based group of four nurseries, last April, before being taken on full-time in one of the schools in September.

The same month a lesbian worker also joined the nursery, in Shepherd’s Bush, west London. After discovering that Miss Mbuyi was Christian she repeatedly asked her about her beliefs, the tribunal will be told.

Miss Mbuyi, now working at another nursery, will claim her colleague sought to provoke her. In December the co-worker spent time in hospital having had an accident at work and Miss Mbuyi gave her a Bible on her return.

The present, Miss Mbuyi says, was as a result of the interest she had shown in her faith. It was received well, she insists.

The following month, however, Miss Mbuyi, a Belgian national who came to Britain six years ago, says her colleague told her she had received abuse about her sexuality from religious people in the past.

During the discussion, Miss Mbuyi says she told the woman that “if I tell you that God is OK with that I am lying to you”.

At a disciplinary meeting, her employers accused Miss Mbuyi of “harassing” her co-worker, saying such behaviour amounted to “gross misconduct”. The co-worker could not be reached for comment.

Already, we see workers in particular fields like nursing and child care being grilled by their co-workers and supervisors about their beliefs. Mandatory sensitivity training has been the rule in much of corporate America. It’s getting to the point where you can’t even be a Christian and keep your beliefs to yourself, as in the Brendan Eich or Frank Turek terminations. Even if you say nothing at all at the office, gay activists are apparently digging through your private life to dig up dirt on you in order to force you into celebrating their lifestyle. OR ELSE.

When I started this blog in 2009, I always knew that there would come a time with the immoral secular left would figure out who I was and make me unemployable. I have tried to keep clear of them so I could use the freedom I still have to make a difference for what I believe. But I have no doubt that the goal of the secular leftists is to make impossible to both be a Christian and earn a living.

This is something we need to fight now, while there is still time. It’s not just our religious liberty that is on the line – it’s everyone’s religious liberty. What I would really like to see is for the church to get serious about motivating all the people in church to see these threats and then be thoughtful about what they are studying in school, and where they are going to work. It’s important for us to study hard things and earn a lot of money so we can find back effectively against these threats. Not everyone can do hard degrees and make a lot of money, but everyone who can should. And everyone should be focused like a laser beam on these threats. We are not facing a threat from the poor, so we should not be focusing our main effort on helping the poor. We are facing a threat from the secular elites – that’s where the battle lies here and now.

China’s atheist government demolishes Christian church

From the UK Telegraph.

Excerpt:

Demolition teams began destroying parts of a Chinese church that has become a symbol of resistance to the Communist Party’s draconian clutch on religion, activists and witnesses said on Monday.

Sanjiang church in Wenzhou, a wealthy coastal city known as the “Jerusalem of the East”, made headlines earlier this month when thousands of Christians formed a human shield around its entrance after plans for its demolition were announced.

Church members accused Communist leaders in Zhejiang province of ordering an anti-church crackdown and claimed there were plans to completely or partially demolish at least 10 places of worship.

Officials rejected those accusations, alleging the church had violated building codes.

After mounting their high-profile occupation in early April, many protesters withdrew from Sanjiang church after its leaders appeared to have negotiated a compromise with the government.

However, that deal appears to have broken down in recent days with reports that some church leaders and worshippers had been harassed and detained by security agents and officials.

On Monday morning demolition teams began tearing down parts of the church in Wenzhou, a city around 230 miles south of Shanghai that has one of the country’s largest congregations.

[…]In a recent interview Fenggang Yang, a leading expert on religion in China, said he believed the Asian country could overtake Brazil, Mexico and the United States to become the world’s most numerous Christian congregation by 2030.

However, Prof. Yang warned that Chinese Christians should brace themselves for growing interference as the Communist Party fought to stunt the Church’s growth.

This is the same church that I blogged about before where Christians were blocking bulldozers with their bodies. It is interesting to see how atheists get on when they are dominant and in control of government. In an accidental universe, who’s to say what is right and wrong? And certainly there is no right to religious liberty or free exercise of religion.

China on course to become ‘world’s most Christian nation’ within 15 years

Story from the UK Telegraph.

Excerpt:

Officially, the People’s Republic of China is an atheist country but that is changing fast as many of its 1.3 billion citizens seek meaning and spiritual comfort that neither communism nor capitalism seem to have supplied.

Christian congregations in particular have skyrocketed since churches began reopening when Chairman Mao’s death in 1976 signalled the end of the Cultural Revolution.

Less than four decades later, some believe China is now poised to become not just the world’s number one economy but also its most numerous Christian nation.

“By my calculations China is destined to become the largest Christian country in the world very soon,” said Fenggang Yang, a professor of sociology at Purdue University and author of Religion in China: Survival and Revival under Communist Rule.

“It is going to be less than a generation. Not many people are prepared for this dramatic change.”

China’s Protestant community, which had just one million members in 1949, has already overtaken those of countries more commonly associated with an evangelical boom. In 2010 there were more than 58 million Protestants in China compared to 40 million in Brazil and 36 million in South Africa, according to the Pew Research Centre’s Forum on Religion and Public Life.

Prof Yang, a leading expert on religion in China, believes that number will swell to around 160 million by 2025. That would likely put China ahead even of the United States, which had around 159 million Protestants in 2010 but whose congregations are in decline.

By 2030, China’s total Christian population, including Catholics, would exceed 247 million, placing it above Mexico, Brazil and the United States as the largest Christian congregation in the world, he predicted.

“Mao thought he could eliminate religion. He thought he had accomplished this,” Prof Yang said. “It’s ironic – they didn’t. They actually failed completely.”

Previously, I had blogged about how the Christians in China were rebelling against the Chinese authorities to prevent them from demolishing their churches. It’s not a perfect country at all, but at least there is some good news there.