In her police complaint, Priyalatha has charged Shantaraju, pastor of Bethel Church and Bethel Student Centre, with having sex with young girls and getting them to abort

S Shyam Prasad

Guntur (AP), Jun 30 (PTI) A local pastor was arrested for allegedly murdering a teenager after she became pregnant with his child, police said today.
The victim, identified as Monica (17) from Nadendla village in the district was working as a cook for the pastor, S Ajay Babu for the past one year.

In his explosive new book The Armies Of God: A Study In Militant Christianity, British-born, Malaysia-based academic Iain Buchanan blows the lid off a subject that most scholars and journalists tend to shy away from: the rise of US evangelism as a force in global affairs.

Social welfare department officials on Sunday busted an alleged religious conversion racket in Haleyangadi gram panchayat limits in Mangalore city police limits.

The officials raided ‘Ebenezer prayer hall’ run by a couple, KJ Joy and Elizabeth, without a licence following complaints of child labour being used on the premises. However, policemen, accompanying the raiding party, ended up cracking a religious conversion racket allegedly run by the couple.

“The Gospel has been taught freely in public schools all over the world for some time. Now children in the U.S. have that opportunity, too!” – from the Child Evangelism Fellowship website

A fundamentalist Christian organization, Child Evangelism Fellowship, has recently ramped up their presence on public grade school campuses. They are emboldened by a supreme court decision that said, to paraphrase: if schools lease facilities to anyone they can’t exclude religious groups like CEF. Clarence Thomas, who wrote the majority opinion, asserted that the establishment clause was not at issue, because CEF activities were clearly distinguished from school sponsored activities. But are they? Can children in first grade really tell the difference? Or has CEF crossed a line? In this interview, a Seattle parent, John Lederer, talks about what happened at his daughter’s school.

WIELDING the pen with power and determination to smash the injustice and discrimination against Dalit Christians and other oppressed masses is part of the priestly duties of Fr Mark Stephen.

When he was the parish priest of Ongur, a predominantly Dalit Christian village in the Chengalpattu diocese, during 1984-1990, he followed with utmost concern the humiliations meted out to the oppressed people by the upper castes within the Christian community in several villages. Close observation and evaluation of the situation prevailing in certain villages, including Thachur and K.K. Pudur, led him to conclude that the discriminatory practices could be curbed only by building a powerful mass movement. As one who had never concealed his sympathies for the downtrodden, he took part in the Dalit Christian Movement and supported the cause of the oppressed sections within the fold of Christianity.

Over the last decade, a large number of Buddhist temples in Korea had been destroyed or damaged by fanatically devout Christians. More recently, the Buddha statues, regarded as the devil, were attacked and beheaded in the name of Jesus.

Tensions run high within the Christian community in Thachur village, and the government has adopted a hands-off approach for now.

A. MURALITHARAN

The Roman Catholic church at Thachur village.

The Narmada Samajik Kumbh, a purely cultural event is being politicised and demonised so much that it makes one feel as though the Hindus cannot even gather for a legitimate cause. The unwarranted protest of some Christian leaders over the Kumbh and the instant support of the Congress Party to them only confirm the long-held suspicion, that the Congress party and the UPA government are actively abetting religious conversion of tribals and adivasis.

"Conversion, murder and India's Supreme Court" by Mathew Schmalz, Professor of Religious Studies at College of the Holy Cross, was featured on Washington Post's On Faith a few days ago. I take this opportunity to respond to two questions he posed, namely, "Is conversion wrong?" and "Is anger over conversion an extenuating circumstance for murder?"