What Would You Do?

NPR's Morning Edition had a sobering story today about the persecution of Christians in Iraq. You can listen to it here, or you can read a CNN article about the same subject here.

It's not just Iraq where Christians are having a hard time, of course. Most incidents never reach the press and we never hear about them.

Nevertheless, the NY Times, that bastion of liberalism, ran a story yesterday about the persecution of Christians in India. (Last November, I blogged about the hard time Dalits have in India; the NYT story isn't about Dalits, though.) As I read the stories, I found myself wondering what I would do if faced with these situations. What would you do? It's easy to show up at church in America and sing about our loyalty to Jesus and how wonderful it is to be a Christian. The worst opposition we face is usually our own sin and self-preoccupied narcissism. But what if we faced what these Indians face? What would we do? Check these excerpted vignettes, or read the entire story here:

The family of Solomon Digal was summoned by neighbors to what serves as a public square in front of the village tea shop.

They were ordered to get on their knees and bow before the portrait of a Hindu preacher. They were told to turn over their Bibles, hymnals and the two brightly colored calendar images of Christ that hung on their wall. Then, Mr. Digal, 45, a Christian since childhood, was forced to watch his Hindu neighbors set the items on fire.

“ ‘Embrace Hinduism, and your house will not be demolished,’ ” Mr. Digal recalled being told on that Wednesday afternoon in September. “ ‘Otherwise, you will be killed, or you will be thrown out of the village.’ ”

...

Here in Kandhamal, the district that has seen the greatest violence, more than 30 people have been killed, 3,000 homes burned and over 130 churches destroyed, including the tin-roofed Baptist prayer hall where the Digals worshiped. Today it is a heap of rubble on an empty field, where cows blithely graze.

Across this ghastly terrain lie the singed remains of mud-and-thatch homes. Christian-owned businesses have been systematically attacked. Orange flags (orange is the sacred color of Hinduism) flutter triumphantly above the rooftops of houses and storefronts.

...

[A] Hindu mob in the village of Nuagaon dragged a Catholic priest and a nun from their residence, tore off much of their clothing and paraded them through the streets.

The nun told the police that she had been raped by four men, a charge the police say was borne out by a medical examination. Yet no one was arrested in the case until five weeks later, after a storm of media coverage.

...

A few steps from where the nun had been attacked in Nuagaon, five men, their heads freshly shorn, emerged from a soggy tent in a relief camp for Christians fleeing their homes.

The men had also been summoned to a village meeting in late August, where hundreds of their neighbors stood with machetes in hand and issued a firm order: Get your heads shaved and bow down before our gods, or leave this place.

Trembling with fear, Daud Nayak, 56, submitted to a shaving, a Hindu sign of sacrifice. He drank, as instructed, a tumbler of diluted cow dung, considered to be purifying.

In the eyes of his neighbors, he reckoned, he became a Hindu.

In his heart, he said, he could not bear it.

All five men said they fled the next day with their families. They refuse to return.

What would you do?

Dalit Defections

The Dalits of India have been receiving a fair amount of press in the last couple years. Some Christians have taken them up as a cause.

Dalits are not an ethnic group; rather, they are a sociological group (caste/class) that used to be generally referred to as the "untouchables." There are about 130 million of them in India.

Some of those 130 million are converts to Christianity. But their conversions lead to a form of persecution, and many are consequently hiding their faith. Here are some excerpts from a September 19 Wall Street Journal article describing the situation. I've cut out a lot of the article in order to keep the focus on the point that stood out to me:

MEDIPALLY, India - Every Sunday, women and children gather to pray in a tiny, whitewashed church on the edge of this southern Indian village, sitting cross-legged on blue plastic sheets as they sing Christian hymns.

The men don't dare to come. "If they are seen in the church, the officials will be informed," says Vatipally Aharon, Medipally's Baptist pastor.

Almost all the Christians here -- and the overwhelming majority across India -- hail from the so-called Dalit community, the former "untouchables" relegated to the bottom of the Hindu caste hierarchy. Under India's constitution, Dalits are entitled to affirmative-action benefits, including 15% of all federal government jobs and admissions in government-funded universities. That provides the country's most downtrodden with a way to escape their traditional occupations such as emptying village latrines, burying cow carcasses, and tanning animal hides.

But there is a catch: Any Dalit caught abandoning Hinduism for Christianity or Islam loses these privileges, and can be fired from jobs gained under the quota. The rules are enforced by vigilant local officials who keep a close eye on villagers' comings and goings.

. . .

But with India's expanding economy offering unprecedented opportunities for social and economic advancement, a great many Dalits are now turning to Christianity, attracted by benefits like education and health care that are sometimes offered by Western-funded congregations. This allows them to seek opportunities beyond the government sector, in the booming information-technology and services industries that put a premium on the Westernized outlook and English-language skills.

Much to the dismay of Hindu nationalist groups, the number of India's secret Christians has climbed in recent years to an estimated 25 million people, about the size of the officially registered Christian population.

The gains among secret Christians come despite the obvious risks: Affirmative-action benefits often mean the difference between grinding poverty and a glimmer of hope for better life.

A lanky 30-year-old with a trimmed mustache, Venkatesh Gunti was born into a Dalit household here in Medipally, a cluster of pastel-colored homes set in the rolling green hills of Andhra Pradesh state. Since his teenage years, Mr. Gunti frequently prayed in the village's Zion church, established by South African missionaries. Three years ago, he found a prized job that would have allowed him to escape the misery of rural life -- as a handyman in a government college in the town of Bhongir. Zoologist Mukesh Kumar says he was denied a job because he converted to Islam.
The job was reserved for a Dalit, and Mr. Gunti had to produce a "scheduled caste" certificate -- something he believed would be a mere formality.

But when Mr. Gunti applied for it at the local government revenue collection office, the clerk, Mr. Gunti recalls, refused to issue the document. According to reports filed by the village secretary, Mr. Gunti was a regular churchgoer and therefore no longer qualified for "scheduled caste" status. He didn't get the job and had to stay in the village, eking out a living as a manual laborer.

To gain back the affirmative-action benefits, Mr. Gunti says he had to pretend that he had reverted to Hinduism, participating in a Hindu religious festival when he knew that the village secretary was watching. Last year, the subterfuge finally worked, and Mr. Gunti was reclassified as a member of the "scheduled caste." He says he won't partake in any more Hindu rituals, but will also steer clear of the church. Mr. Gunti has yet to find a new job.

Questioned about the case, Raghu Rama Rao, Medipally's village secretary, explains that he has no choice. "This is the law -- if we'll come to know they go to church, we'll have to make an inquiry and submit a report," Mr. Rao says in his home, its outer wall sporting a poster for a Hindu nationalist organization. Mr. Rao adds that he's already showing kindness by reporting only the active churchgoers, and leaving alone those believed Christian Dalits who do not openly flaunt their faith.

Such thorough enforcement means that secret lives have to be lived throughout India's society. "If they ever find out I'm a Christian, I will lose my position, no question about it," says a Dalit schoolteacher who behaves as a Hindu when he teaches in a state school near Medipally but decorates his Hyderabad apartment with pictures of Jesus and the Virgin Mary.

"The government is forcing us to lie," echoes Prasadarao Yadavalli, a 48-year-old official in Andhra Pradesh's state bureaucracy who rose to his post thanks to Dalit quotas while hiding his Christian faith. Mr. Yadavalli says he has decided to finally come out this year, as he could no longer maintain this double life: "Whatever the consequences, God will take care of us." . . .

So, to summarize:

1. The Constitution guarantees educational and job opportunities for Dalits . . .


2. But they become ineligible if they convert to Christianity, because they lose their status as Dalits (which is a Hindu classification) . . .


3. So they pretend they're not Christians in order to remain eligible.

This bothers me. Not belonging to the Joel Osteen School of Happy Christianity, I tend to think that persecution is a natural consequence of proclaiming faith in Jesus and that steadfastness in suffering/persecution is a sign of true faith. Our American culture is an aberration, in that not many of us have to suffer for our faith in Jesus - certainly not in the way some New Testament believers did.

It's easy for me to criticize the Dalits, because I'm not in their shoes (or their bare feet). But I am sincere in my hope that if I have to choose between Jesus and a job, then I'll choose Jesus. Otherwise, my faith will be shown to have been nothing more than a faith of convenience. . . and thus, no faith at all.

News You May Have Missed: 737 Lands on Mumbai Sidewalk

An earlier blog referenced the precarious commute to work in Mumbai, India. Now, it appears that even airplanes get stuck in Mumbai's famed traffic. Read this linked article for details.

My favorite part of the article is where it says, "No one is clear about its owner, its destination and the reason why it is parked there but the young ones are having a field day. Not only them, but some homeless men even found the cargo hold of the plane good enough to be used as a makeshift kitchen. And some even strung a clothesline where the plane's wings once were."

Walt Disney may think it's a small world, after all, but some parts of it are clearly very, very different.

(The BBC's version of the story is here. It's best if you read the quotes with your "Indian accent.")

News You May Have Missed: Murder Rate Hits 90% in U.S.

I've been reading lately about abortion practices in India and China, where it's a well-known practice to abort baby girls (er, female fetuses), because parents are constrained by law or economics to have only one child, and boys are more valuable to the family. Girls are merely money pits. This practice is technically illegal, but it happens, it's no big secret, sonogram manufacturers knowingly provide the equipment for it, and nobody ever seems to be prosecuted for it.

India and China didn't invent eugenic abortion, however. The Nazis didn't either, but during their Reich it was public policy, not something done in secret, to eliminate imbeciles and cripples. The picture you see here, which I found on Wikipedia, is from that time period. It promotes a forced euthanasia program; clearly, the regime would have supported eugenic abortion, as well. Translated, the poster says, "This person suffering from hereditary defects costs the community 60,000 Reichsmark during his lifetime. Fellow Germans, that is your money, too." Why waste money on worthless persons? Eliminate them for the benefit of all.

Peter Singer at Princeton is (in)famous for advocating something similar, but I've always considered him to be a fringe idiot, not someone in the vanguard of public thought.

Maybe I was wrong.

In today's NY Times on-line, I read the following:

Sarah Itoh, a self-described “almost-eleven-and-a-half,” betrayed no trace of nervousness as she told a roomful of genetic counselors and obstetricians about herself one recent afternoon.

She likes to read, she said. Math used to be hard, but it is getting easier. She plays clarinet in her school band. She is a junior girl scout and an aunt, and she likes to organize, so her room is very clean. Last year, she won three medals in the Special Olympics.

I am so lucky I get to do so many things,” she concluded. “I just want you to know, even though I have Down syndrome, it is O.K.”

Sarah’s appearance at Henry Ford Hospital here is part of an unusual campaign being undertaken by parents of children with Down syndrome who worry about their future in the face of broader prenatal testing that could sharply reduce the number of those born with the genetic condition.

Until this year, only pregnant women 35 and older were routinely tested to see if their fetuses had the extra chromosome that causes Down syndrome. As a result many couples were given the diagnosis only at birth. But under a new recommendation from the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, doctors have begun to offer a new, safer screening procedure to all pregnant women, regardless of age.

About 90 percent of pregnant women who are given a Down syndrome diagnosis have chosen to have an abortion.

Would you have guessed 90%? I'm flabbergasted. . . Particularly because this statistic comes from the NY Times, which is not exactly known for its pro-life advocacy. Elsewhere in the article we read such tidbits as:

Genetic counselors, who often give test results to prospective parents, say they need to respect patients who may have already made up their minds to terminate their pregnancy. Suggesting that they read a flyer or spend a day with a family [to learn what Down syndrome children are really like], they say, can unnecessarily complicate what is for many a painful and time-pressured decision.

So once again, the value of a human life comes down to the degree upon which it impinges on my own. We wouldn't want to "complicate" a "time-pressured" decision, would we? Somebody might have to miss a concert or a party or a business trip if forced to read a flyer or learn something more about the life they're considering terminating. How intrusive.

.

I don't have kids and probably never will. But you don't have to have kids to know that something about killing people to improve the gene pool and personal convenience is very, very wrong.

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I encourage you to read the entire NY Times article (you can register for free). There's actually a positive spin to what's happening, in the form of parents with Down Syndrome kids getting the word out that these are human beings worthy of love. I'm just sorry it's come to this.

Quitcherbitchen: Commuting Could Be Worse

We love to complain about traffic in Atlanta. And not without reason. But it could be worse. On April 19, The Wall Street Journal ran a story (p. A1) about the commuter trains in Mumbai, India. It's well written and well worth reading. The article's only available to subscribers, but you can read most of it here, with the added benefit of additional pictures.

Makes my air-conditioned single occupancy vehicle with surround-sound stereo seem like paradise.